Maslow, Abraham

Introduction

Born on April 1, 1908, in Brooklyn, New York, to uneducated Jewish immigrants from Russia, Maslow was the eldest of seven children in his family. Maslow’s parents pushed him into academics, and he received his degrees – BA, MA, and PhD in Psychology – from the University of Wisconsin in 1930, 1931, and 1934, respectively. During his early research career, Maslow worked with Harry Harlow and E. L. Thorndike, and he became interested in attachment behavior and human sexuality. Maslow started his teaching career at Brooklyn College, and he chaired the Department of Psychology at Brandeis from 1951 to 1969. During his professional life, Maslow met with many intellectuals – chiefly, Adler, Fromm, Horney, and Kurt Goldstein, as well as several Freudian and Gestalt psychologists. He died of a heart attack on June 8, 1970, in California.

Hierarchy of Needs

The Maslowian model of the hierarchy of needs is a critique of Freud’s pessimism and Darwinian survival of the fittest, but...